A recently concluded investigation into Seattle Office for Civil Rights director that Derrick Wheeler-Smith details allegations that Wheeler-Smith went to a strip club in Alabama during an official City of Seattle-sponsored trip to civil rights history sites in the South, along with other men who were on the trip, according to sources familiar with the incident.
A report on the investigation concluded that Wheeler-Smith subjected “a subordinate employee to unwelcome conduct of a sexually explicit nature during a work-related trip” but did not specify that the conduct that made the employee uncomfortable involved going to the strip club with his boss.
The report, for which PubliCola has filed a records request, also found it more likely than not that Wheeler-Smith made “repeated comments of a sexual nature” to employees.
Mayor Katie Wilson’s office has not responded to multiple requests for comment about the future of the office. Wheeler-Smith, along with his deputy, Fahima Mohamed, has been on administrative leave since March.
The January 2023 trip, organized by a group called the Empower Initiative, included visits to important sites related to the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, and the Alabama State Capitol. Staff from then-mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, SOCR, the city’s Office of Arts and Culture, and the diversion group Community Passageways, a city contractor, also reportedly went on the trip.
The Empower Initiative, run by consultant Ben McBride, offers these trips, or “learning labs,” as a “team building experience [that] translates the concept of belonging from inspiring theory to real-life practice,” according to the organization’s website.
On the final night of the trip, several of the men, including Wheeler-Smith, left their hotel in Birmingham and went to a strip club to celebrate a staffer’s birthday, according to accounts of the incident.
Others who participated in the civil rights tour included city staffers who did not accompany the men to the strip club. It’s unclear how many of these staffers were aware of their colleagues’ nighttime jaunt.
Not only was the secretive all-male side quest arguably inappropriate for a city-sponsored trip, the Office for Civil Rights’ mission includes promoting gender equality and empowerment, a commitment staffers would later accuse Wheeler-Smith of flouting on numerous occasions.
As we reported earlier this year, employees accused Wheeler-Smith of making inappropriate sexual comments, belittling Black women, and dismissing staff concerns about the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people, Asian Americans, and Latinos targeted by ICE, among other marginalized groups.
A spokesperson for SOCR responded to PubliCola’s questions about the investigation and alleged strip club visit by saying, “I don’t have that information, and the Department is otherwise not allowed to comment on an open HR investigation.”
The head of the Empower Initiative, Ben McBride, recently wrote a Subatackpraising Wheeler-Smith; the post, titled “A Leadership Journey of Becoming” called the SOCR director “one of those rare leaders who understands that structural work and inner work belong together.”
The Empower Initiative was one of the partners for SOCR’s planned “Bridges of Belonging Community Storytelling Showcase,” along with We Deliver Care, Community Passageways, and Beautifulle LLC. Wheeler-Smith’s half-brother Davis founded Community Passageways and another diversion group that contracts with the city, Choose 180. He is also aco-founder of We Deliver Care, which is run by Wheeler-Smith’s wife Stephanie. Beautifulle was founded by Wheeler-Smith’s former boss at the religious nonprofit World Vision, Leonetta Elaiho. The Bridges of Belonging event was postponed indefinitely in March.
Editor’s note: This story originally mis-identified Davis’ current role with the three group he co-founded. We apologize for the error.
1. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson used unspecified “general but credible threats to safety and security” during the upcoming World Cup games to justify her last-minute decision to turn on more than 20 police surveillance cameras around the stadiums where the games will take place. In a late-afternoon announcement on Friday, Wilson said this information “has persuaded our law enforcement, emergency management, and FIFA security partners that we should be operating at a heightened risk level.”
SPD has staunchly defended the cameras, arguing the footage has already helped police solve crimes. Opponents have argued that the footage is vulnerable to abuse by federal agencies like ICE, vigilantes targeting people who travel to Seattle for reproductive or gender-affirming health care, and police officers themselves.
Wilson’s office told PubliCola won’t keep the cameras on after the World Cup. “Once the games are over and we return to normal safety and security operations, we will turn the cameras off until we make decisions about the original pilot,” a Wilson spokesperson said.
Wilson previously announced that the city would install the cameras, which connect to SPD’s Real Time Crime Center, but not turn them on until her office has had time to evaluate the “pilot” that placed cameras downtown, on Aurora Ave. N., and around 12th and Jackson. The NYU Policing Project just started work on a data and security audit of the police surveillance program.
Earlier this week, Wilson said in an onstage interview that the city already has access to many cameras around the stadium district, including live feeds operated by the Seattle Department of Transportation as well as private cameras operated by businesses, which have historically provided SPD with footage to help them investigate crimes.
2. The city settled a lawsuit filed by four female Seattle police officers who accused former police chief Adrian Diaz of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. The officers—Lauren Truscott, Valarie Carson, Kame Spencer, and Jean Gulpan—will receive a total of $2.6 million, according to a press release from their attorney, Sumeer Singh. Singh now works for Frey Buck, the same firm that once represented Diaz. Last year, PubliCola reported that Buck had ditched Diaz as a client.
“We are happy to see the City of Seattle take accountability for what was a clear lapse in leadership by the previous administration. We hope new leadership will improve working conditions for everyone within the Seattle Police Department, Singh said in a statement.
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3. News of the settlement comes shortly after two LGBTQ+ officers, Anna Fishel and Doug Raguso, filed tort claims against the city, alleging the department discriminated against them and denied them promotions based on their sexual orientation and, in Fishel’s case, her gender.
Fishel, a detective in SPD’s policy unit, said in her complaint that she passed the sergeant’s exam in 2024, rising to number one on the promotion list in 2025, but has been passed over for promotion by five other people since then. During a meeting with Barnes to make the case that she should be promoted as sergeant over her division, Fishel wrote, “I laid out my credentials and experience and my work on the 30×30 initiative,” which established the goal that 30 percent of SPD’s recruit class will be women by 2030.
“I also told him that I am the sole caregiver to my daughter and the only gay female up for Sergeant,” Fishel wrote in her claim. “Despite this, my ranking, and the support of my chain of command, Chief Barnes refused to promote me in place. Instead, he offered me the position of Third Watch Patrol Sergeant,” a position that would have required her to find an overnight caregiver for her child. The position Fishel was seeking went to a straight man, she wrote.
Raguso, a lieutenant, also said he was repeatedly passed over for promotion—including last year, when Barnes removed him as acting captain of Capitol Hill’s East Precinct and reassigned him to the Real Time Crime Center without a promotion. Instead of Raguso, who had worked in the East Precinct for years and was well-liked by many in the city’s historic LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood, Barnes promoted Mike Tietjen and assigned him to head up the precinct.
Barnes’ promotion of Tietjen, which the chief touted on social media, proved controversial: As a lieutenant patrolling the 2020 protest zone around Cal Anderson Park, Tietjen drove onto a sidewalk full of protesters in 2020 and compared them to “cockroaches” as they scattered to avoid his SUV. He was also involved in an incident in which a trans woman accused officers of heckling her and demanding to know what was under her skirt. Barnes eventually removed Tietjen and replaced him with Captain Jim Britt, another straight white man.
An earlier tort claim, by two former command staff members Barnes fired last year, also accused Barnes and members of his team of gender and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. Barnes oversaw a dramatic crackdown on nudity at the nude beach at Denny Blaine Park last year. His chief of staff, Alan Ricketts, reportedly blew off concerns about the optics of arresting people sunbathing at the LGBTQ+-friendly beach, telling one of the former command staff members, “we’re not here for the gays.”
And more details about the city’s settlement with an officer who sued over alleged racial and gender discrimination.
1. Highlighting a Monday update to last week’s story about the settlement between the city and SPD officer Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, who filed a lawsuit in 2023 alleging racial and gender discrimination: The city will pay Bouldin $750,000, according to the settlement agreement.
SPD has settled a number of discrimination lawsuits in recent years, for amounts ranging from around $200,000 (paid to SPD sergeant John O’Neil, who was himself the subject of multiple discrimination complaints) to $3 million (paid to police captain Deanna Nollette, who claimed former chief Adrian Diaz discriminated and retaliated against her by demoting her and moving her to overnight duty after she alleged discrimination.
Bouldin, best known for her chess club for students in Rainier Beach, claimed in her lawsuit that her fellow officers and SPD officials subjected her to “race and gender discrimination on a daily basis that had “been ongoing and continuous throughout her entire career.”
2. Citing concerns about potential attempts by ICE and other federal agencies to access camera footage and data, Mayor Katie Wilson said last week that she’ll hold off on expanding the Seattle Police Department’s camera surveillance program until an audit into the privacy and security of SPD’s camera operations is complete.
Some council members, including Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle, expressed concern on Tuesday that the audit will take too long, arguing that Wilson needs to turn on the cameras that will be installed around the stadiums in advance of the World Cup games in June. Wilson said the city will not turn the cameras on unless there’s a “credible threat.”
Committee chair Kettle, a former Navy intelligence officer, said this was inadequate, given how often major terrorist attacks have not involved a credible threat.
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“As somebody who worked in the intelligence security world, I think about 9/11. I think about being in European Command and Germany during the East Africa bombings, we were well aware of al Qaeda and bin Laden. … I was one of those people that read the chatter in the leadup to 9/11 and on 911 was there a credible threat, warning that al Qaeda was going to use planes as weapons to go into buildings? No. No, there wasn’t.”
“And it should be noted too,” Kettle continued, “that we’re in a heightened threat environment especially because of the Iran war. And it’s important to note that Iran was scheduled to play here on Pride weekend. And I think it’s important, among different other reasons, to also look out for LGBTQ+ community.” (Iran’s participation in World Cup games in the US remains up in the air.)
Kettle also chided camera opponents who “think they know the program” but, according to him, don’t. “They think they know all the decisions that went into the program, to include incorporating Seattle values, incorporating the idea that we’re not going to include facial recognition.”
Later in the meeting, the committee approved a “pause” on SPD’s use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) on patrol cars and parking enforcement vehicles, which will put Seattle in compliance with a new state law banning the use of ALPRs near places of worship, food banks, immigration facilities, schools, and health care facilities that provide reproductive or gender-affirming health care.
Long before Trump was reelected, the city’s own Surveillance Working Group strongly recommended against installing the cameras at all, based on concerns about privacy and the risk of “disparate impacts … on minority communities.”
3. One of the oddest things that routinely happens at Seattle City Council meetings these days is that Councilmember Rob Saka refuses to refer to his committee by its actual name. For three years running, Saka has headed up the transportation committee, which was expanded this year to include arts and the Seattle Center, giving it the acronym TASC.
But Saka doesn’t use that acronym. Instead, he insists on referring to his committee as “STEPS,” short for “Safety, Transportation, Engineering Projects, Sports and Experiences.” He uses this not-quite-acronym consistently across all platforms—from the City Council dais to his Instagram, where he recently shortened the name to “Sports and Experiences, otherwise known as STEPS.”
Saka’s committee does not deal directly with public safety, engineering (beyond transportation projects), sports, or general “experiences.”
Saka has reportedly been asked more than once to refer to his committee by its actual name. Nevertheless, he persists. He even announced the “informal name” in a formal press release earlier this year.
Former police chief Adrian Diaz answers questions at a press conference announcing his replacement by Sue Rahr.
By Andrew Engelson
Two weeks after Mayor Bruce Harrell announced he was removing Seattle police chief Adrian Diaz and replacing him, on an interim basis, with former King County Sheriff Sue Rahr, several current and former Seattle Police Department officers say Diaz established a “dictatorship” at the department in which officers who speak out against the chief and an inner circle of leadership have been demoted or subject to retaliatory investigations.
Several women have sued Diaz, along with others in the department, alleging gender discrimination and harassment.
Harrell announced that Diaz would take a new role as head of “special projects,” which were rumored to include work prepping for the FIFA World Cup in 2026. A spokesperson for SPD said “it has not been determined if he is working on the logistics for FIFA World Cup.”
The spokesperson said Rahr has not decided what rank Diaz will have when he returns or what his salary will be; currently, Diaz’ salary is around $340,000 a year.
One SPD officer who used to be part of SPD’s command structure spoke at length with PubliCola and asked to remain anonymous because of an active lawsuit. She said she was the subject of at least five complaints to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) in a period of two months, which she claims were in retaliation for speaking up against Diaz and his circle of advisers.
“The chief surrounds himself with very, very loyal subjects who will not question any of his activities or any of his decisions,” she said. “Any dissenting voices are immediately silenced.”
Though Diaz is no longer chief, that core leadership circle remains. The high-ranking officer said that without further staffing changes, the pattern of retaliation and frivolous OPA investigations will continue.
“OPA is supposed to be for serious misconduct,” the officer said. “And it has been weaponized by Adrian [Diaz], by Jamie [Tompkins], by John O’Neil, and by Dan Nelson to punish people that speak up. And to put the atmosphere of fear into everybody so that nobody will speak up,” she said.
Tompkins, a former evening news anchor for Q13 FOX, is SPD’s chief of staff; John O’Neil is communications director and co-defendant in a discrimination lawsuit filed by four female officers; Dan Nelson is an assistant chief appointed in 2023.
Tompkins and Nelson declined to comment for this story and O’Neil did not respond to a request for comment.
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In response to a question about whether a climate of retaliation exists at SPD, interim chief Rahr recently told PublCola, “I am spending time talking with as many SPD members as I can to learn why these perceptions exist so I can take steps to address them.”
Diaz and the department are currently facing at least three lawsuits by six SPD officers. These include a lawsuit former assistant chief Eric Greening filed against Diaz in May, alleging racial discrimination and retaliation; a $5 million tort claim four female officers—Valerie Carson, Judinna Gulpan, Kame Spencer, and lieutenant Lauren Trucsott—filed against Diaz, public affairs director John O’Neil, and SPD human resources director Rebecca McKechnie in April; and a gender discrimination lawsuit against Diaz filed in January by former assistant chief Deanna Nollette.
SPD and the city of Seattle are also the subject of of a race and gender discrimination lawsuit filed by detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, a 43-year SPD veteran.
In addition, Steven Hirjak, a former assistant chief who shot and killed 25-year-old Herbert Hightower in 2004, sued Diaz and SPD for discrimination and retaliation, and SPD settled with Hirjak for $600,000 last December.
Although interim chief Rahr told reporters at press conference announcing her appointment that she didn’t plan any changes to SPD leadership, she made it clear to PubliCola that she could make other personnel changes in the future. “If I need to make a staff change, I will make it,” Rahr said. “The mayor was very clear. He said you will have the ability to change staff as you need to.”
Rahr did act quickly to undo one recent high-profile Diaz decision, reinstating assistant chief Tyrone Davis, whom Diaz put on leave a week before Rahr’s appointment because of an open OPA complaint. The King County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that it is conducting a criminal investigation of Davis, putting the OPA complaint temporarily on hold, but declined to share details about the investigation. Davis declined to comment on the investigation.
In addition, the Pierce County prosecutor’s office confirmed that the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office is conducting a criminal investigation of assistant chief Eric Barden based on at least one OPA complaint. The office would not confirm what the allegations against Barden are. OPA declined a public records request for details on the complaint against Barden, saying, “the contents of an active investigation are categorically exempt in their entirety.”
Tammy Floyd, a former SPD lieutenant who thought she was on a path to become SPD’s first female assistant chief responsible for patrol, says a climate of misogyny and infighting among leadership pushed her out of SPD.
Floyd says she was transferred out of patrol, where she had spent her entire career, into investigations—a department in which she had no experience—soon after Diaz became interim chief in 2020. She was sent to the chaotic East Precinct, which was still recovering from the 2020 protests. “We felt abandoned in that building in the East Precinct,” Floyd said. “Nobody knew what the mission was, what the vision was. You knew that nobody in [Diaz’s] inner circle cared, that he didn’t care.”Continue reading “Officers Describe SPD Under Diaz as a “Dictatorship” Where Retaliation was Routine”→
Murder and weapons arrest rates per 100,000 population among large metropolitan counties, by ShotSpotter Implementation Status 1999-2016; Source: Impact of ShotSpotter Technology on Firearm Homicides and Arrests Among Large Metropolitan Counties: a Longitudinal Analysis, 1999-2016
By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Bruce Harrell announced on Friday afternoon that he has abandoned plans to install acoustic gunshot locators—colloquially known as Shotspotter, for the largest company selling such systems—”[n]ow that more specific cost estimates have been received.” The news, buried in the sixth paragraph of a late-Friday press release, ends more than a decade of efforts to install the recording devices in neighborhoods around Seattle (for now.)
According to a spokesperson for Harrell’s office, the cost to implement the full “Crime Prevention Technology Pilot,” which also includes CCTV camera surveillance and deployment of automatic license detectors on most police cars, was $2.5 million; the gunshot locator system made up about $800,000 of that total.
“In receiving updated cost estimates and aligning more closely to the allocated budget, the implementation package for the first year of the pilot will only include CCTV and RTCC to remain within the authorized budget,” the spokesperson said. Conveniently, nixing the gunshot surveillance system will get the total cost for the pilot down to the amount budgeted for the entire pilot program—around $1.8 million.
The city still plans to install CCTV cameras in three neighborhoods where police already do regular “emphasis patrols” —Aurora Ave. N, Third Avenue downtown, and the Chinatown-International District—and connect them to the city’s “real-time crime center.” Research suggests that while surveillance cameras may reduce crime within direct view of the cameras, that “deterrence effect” is offset by a “displacement effect” when people simply move a short distance away.
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Shotspotter and similar systems, which have been around since the 1990s, are not new or particularly innovative technology. They use microphones, recording devices, GPS, and cell networks to detect and record sounds that resemble gunfire, identify their approximate location, and transmit them to “acoustic experts” who listen to the sounds, filter out false alarms, and alert police. False alarms are common; in Chicago, which recently ended its contract with the company that manufactures Shotspotter, fewer than one out of ever 10 dispatches from Shotspotter alerts produced any evidence of a gun-related crime.
Critics have argued that gunfire detection systems can result in overpolicing in communities of color, put police on high alert whenever they’re in neighborhoods under gunshot surveillance, and waste time and resources on false alarms. Evidence from cities that have deployed Shotspotter and similar systems shows that although they slightly increase police response speeds, faster responses don’t result in more arrests or a reduction in crime.
Harrell has supported acoustic gunshot detectors since at least 2012, when he backed then-mayor Mike McGinn’s plan to install a gunshot detection system, calling it an “effective technology.”
Outgoing police chief Adrian Diaz speaks at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, flanked by Mayor Bruce Harrell and incoming interim police chief Sue Rahr.
By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Bruce Harrell officially announced that Police Chief Adrian Diaz will be stepping into an unspecified new role in “special projects” this afternoon, at a crowded press conference in which Harrell also announced that former King County Sheriff Sue Rahr will serve as interim police chief while the city does a national search for Diaz’ permanent replacement.
As we reported in our initial story on Harrell’s decision to remove Diaz this morning, at least half a dozen women and one man, former assistant chief Eric Greening, have accused Diaz or other department officials of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and creating a misogynistic culture. Two of the lawsuits, by veteran police detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin and Captain Eric Greening, also allege racial discrimination. Bouldin and Greening are Black; Greening applied for the permanent police chief position when Diaz was interim and was demoted from assistant chief after Diaz won the permanent job.
In his remarks, Harrell did not mentioned the allegations against the chief and others in the department, instead praising Diaz as a visionary leader who had turned the department around and deserved nothing but respect. “His integrity, in my mind, is beyond reproach,” Harrell said. “He’s a human being, and a good human being at that.”
In his own brief remarks, Diaz cited his own accomplishments, including the creation of a course for police recruits that includes trainings by representatives from marginalized communities and meetings with community groups, before breaking down in tears. “I’ve accomplished so much in four years as chief, but there’s more work to be done. I passed that challenge along to [Rahr], and I’ll continue to support the city in [its] transition,” Diaz said.
Harrell would not elaborate on what Diaz’ “special projects” role would entail, or what his rank and salary will be. Diaz’ most recent rank in the department was lieutenant, but Harrell suggested it was unlikely he would be demoted back to his previous rank.
Asked to respond to the allegations against Diaz, which include sexually harassing female subordinates and putting them in situations that made them feel uncomfortable, Harrell declined, citing the fact that the lawsuits are ongoing and that the city has appointed an outside investigator to look into the allegations against Diaz and others in the department.
“I will not comment on any litigation, and that’s an unwise move by any stretch of the imagination,” Harrell said. “There’s a process for that, and it’s called due process for a reason, and so we’ll let the litigation and the claims play out.”
But by praising Diaz at length while verbally waving away the allegations against him, Harrell gave tacit credence to a vocal contingent of Diaz supporters who claim he is the victim of an internal conspiracy based on fabricated allegations.
Two of these supporters, Community Police Commission member Rev. Harriet Walden and SPD African American Advisory Council member Victoria Beach, who is an employee of the department, have suggested that all of the women who’ve sued the department are liars. In a press conference last week, Walden and Beach blamed the women’s allegations on racism and an internal “mutiny” at SPD. Both women expressed support for Diaz from the audience during Harrell’s press conference when he called on them during a question and answer period.
“I know for a fact that he’s going to be proven innocent,” Beach said. “I’m not the chief, but I would say the hell with all of this, and I would be out of there, and I would have the biggest lawsuit ever. This is wrong. Nobody is safe in the Seattle Police Department.”
Prior to working as an employee at SPD, Beach had a $63,000 contract through 2023 to “assist in the coordination of the various advisory councils that the department works with.”
In 2022 and 2023, Walden held a contract with the Human Services Department to conduct around 14 in-person or virtual “Virtues Healing Circles” per year; in the circles, participants draw “virtue cards” from a deck and discuss how the virtue listed on the card resonates with their personal experience. The goal is to create healing and supportive environments for people who have experienced trauma, such as gun violence. Walden’s contract also required her “to distribute Virtues Cards at community events and encourage others to host their own circles” and “attend events at the request of the City to respond to crises whenever feasible for Rev. Walden.”
When PubliCola reached out to Walden earlier this year to ask about her contract, she said that “until you have the experience [of participating in a Virtues Circle] I don’t have anything to say to you,” adding, “I’ve never had a contract with the city before, so why shouldn’t [I] have a contract with the city?” Beach did not respond to our request for comment at the time, and approached me on Wednesday to say that she did not “owe” me an interview (which, of course, neither she nor anyone else does.)
While the lawsuits wind their way through the courts, several insiders observed that Harrell’s effusive comments about Diaz’ performance could help him find a job as police chief elsewhere, which Diaz said he would be open to doing in the future. After Diaz broke down crying during his own brief remarks, Harrell said, “You can’t make up that kind of heart,” and claimed Diaz “gets calls all the time to lead other departments.”
“The city should have ultimate faith in the police department,” Harrell said. “We don’t make panic moves, we make strategic moves… If there’s one takeaway from this press conference, it’s that I stand with this fine leader.”
Rahr is an advisor for SPD’s 30 by 30 initiative—an effort aimed at increasing the number of female police recruits to 30 percent by 2030—and a national expert on police recruitment. At the end of the press conference, PubliCola asked Rahr whether she was concerned about the allegations of misogyny, harassment, and discrimination in the department and what she would do, if anything, to address what many women have described as a misogynistic culture at SPD.
“I’ll be honest with you, I have concerns about the culture of all police department,” Rahr said. “I don’t think the Seattle Police Department is worse or better than others. I think we have work to do in every department. One of the reasons I was very anxious to jump in is, I think the Seattle Police Department is open to doing something meaningful and implementing systemic change.”
Councilmember Rob Saka, who came to the press conference along with Councilmember Tanya Woo, said he stood by Harrell’s decision and declined—in response to a reporter’s repeated questions—to say that he “stands with” Diaz. In a statement, council public safety committee chair Bob Kettle said the “gender equity issues identified by women within the department in the 30×30 Report. … are serious, they are real, and they need to be addressed. I am excited to work with Interim Chief Rahr to continue that work.”
During the public safety committee’s meeting on Tuesday, Saka raised questions about Diaz’ frequent use of security detail, asking rhetorically whether it makes sense to pay for the chief to have full security at all times, the same way the mayor does.
Speaking to PubliCola after the meeting, Saka said, “I do think it makes a lot of sense for the mayor to have executive protection at all times. And I think as a policy matter, we should question whether it makes sense, as a standard practice, to have the chief of police have equal executive services protection rather than protection in response to a specific threat. We are grossly understaffed and under-resourced today… We’re in a $260 million and growing budget deficit. So always thinking about how we can best help drive efficiencies and streamline things and optimize our investments,
Harrell said he anticipates the search for a new permanent police chief will take between four and six months; Rahr does not plan to apply for the job.
